Game Design: Abstracting Distance

While I’m writing about locations, I should talk about movement and distance and such. I think it was when I finally decided to read up on how the Fourth Edition psionic leader class, the Ardent, worked, that I started to look at how the different leader classes worked in general. The Ardent functions at pretty close range, most of its powers work out to about 5 squares on the map.

Back in May, I wrote about attack types in Fourth Edition, and some ideas I had for modifying and adding to those attack types. Attack types categorized by their range of effectiveness: melee and ranged, close and area. I almost included “targeting” as well, but I remembered that targets are determined independently. Healing Word, for instance, targets a single ally within a close burst.

In the process of thinking about effective ranges reminded me of how Guild Wars defines ranges of effectiveness: adjacent, nearby, in the area, and earshot. For comparison, many ranged effects work just outside “earshot,” allowing for characters to begin combat outside of the “danger zone” (where combat usually takes place).

Fourth Edition seems to make use of “adjacent” (within 1-2 squares) and “nearby” (within 3-5 squares) for the majority of its melee and close powers — melee attacks working either against adjacent targets, or within 2 squares of them for reach weapons, and close burst or blast attacks hitting targets out to about 5 squares.

Most ranged and area-effect spells in Fourth Edition hit targets about 10 squares away, while many bows work almost twice as far as that, there’s a clear advantage for archers. Even shortbows and crossbows work out to about 15 squares, which still proves to be an advantage over a majority of spellcasters.